#49 - 'You're Schooling Me!"

The stallion took a breath and shut up, finally, and Ahrimaz wondered why they were all taking so long to savage him.  The mare’s long, wet, gooey lips suddenly slapped all over his face and she snorted green goo on him and then danced away, tossing her head in the air, whinnying, for all the world giggling at him. 

He surged up and out of the sleeves of the coat and found himself on his feet, facing her, hands and sleeves scraping the mess off his face.  “Not funny!” He spat at her, bent down to scoop a double handful of clean sand to scrub his face and someone goosed him so he staggered forward, found himself draped over her neck rather than sprawled on his face.

A muffled thump beside him and Heylia appeared to levitate onto the horse’s rump.  Just… appeared. And the mare didn’t jump either, though her ears flicked back and then forward.  One of the others whinnied again, snorting as though he were the funniest thing she’d ever seen.

“You are all in this together, obviously,” he snarled and made to step back from the mare but found he was boxed in by the dapple, pressed up against the bicolour, but very gently for animals this size.  He managed to turn so he faced the same direction as they at least and the horses began slowly walking him around the arena, pinned between them, Heylia purring in his ear.

His head swiveled around to see the dog lying in the coat on the sand, watching, the other mare gone back to her own stall. They wouldn’t let him run or squeeze out from between them.  When he tried to stop they just flicked their inside ears at him and walked on.  When he tried sliding down they both stopped and sank on their hocks until they were all crouched on the sand.

He started laughing around then.  “You… you… bitches!”  He gasped as they slowly rose up and walked on.  “You’re schooling me!”

Both of the mares whickered, Heylia meowed and the dogs were now dancing around their little courtage, youping.  “The animals…” he gasped for breath and the mares eased up on the pressure a little, and he found himself with an arm over both necks.  “In this world seem vastly more aware than in mine.  Please don’t tell me they’ve all been made more stupid by us!”

The voice from the door was reassuring.  “No, they’re probably keeping it more secret from you so you can’t use them as effectively.  After all… the animals here, now, are mostly Goddess animals.”

It was Wenhiffar and Ahrimaz went weak at the knees, holding himself up on the mare’s necks.  They all faced the door and the dapple stepped away to go press her forehead against his… mother’s… chest.  The duo-coloured mare stood rock steady and Heylia had her nose pressed into his ear, one paw draped firmly over his shoulder.

“Really?”  I mean… I thought only cats were Aeono’s… I mean Tiger Master, Master of Lions and so forth.”

“Big cats.  War cats and smaller are Liryen’s.”  Her hands rubbed up over the dapple’s poll and down to scratch behind the jaws, slow, slow circuits of rubbing.  Ahrimaz was almost mesmerized just watching.

“Come on, C’est Belle,” she said finally.  “Son, stay where you are for a moment if you will.”  She whistled and the dogs stopped zooming and wiggling about, settling at heel as though cast out of stone.  She and the dapple -- Ahrimaz could put no other word other than ‘marched’—over to the stallion’s stall.

She stared into the dimness arms crossed and there wasn’t any sound from within.  “He’s a killer, Wenhiffar,” Ahrimaz couldn’t help saying.  “He’s—“ There was a scream from inside the stall at his voice and as the snaking head of the stallion flashed out, ears flattened, skull-like, Wenhiffar slapped his nose, the mare bit him and both dogs jumped and nipped his neck.  He suddenly stood, torn between ‘I am a killer’ and ‘don’t hurt me, I’m a foal, see?’

“You gurt fool you’ve pissed on your hay, shat all over the place and trodden your straw foul, you’ve ripped splinters off everywhere and broke your signals AGAIN.” The dapple mare emphasized each word, pawing at the sand. “WIND HEART OUT OF FAIR WIND, YOU ASSHOLE!”

Ahrimaz put his forehead against the bi-coloured mare and listened in awe, very glad that he’d never heard his mother’s voice angry enough to use every name he had, turned on him.  That would have hurt more than almost any of the monster’s tortures.

#48 - If You Won't, He Will

He stood at the door of the cell.  The door itself was wide open.  The lamp in front of the painted mural hissed to itself then was silent.  His toes touched the line of the threshold as if pressed against a rock wall.

Ahrimaz held to the door posts not sure if he was holding himself up, holding himself back, or bracing to try and lunge through the opening, breath shuddering in and out of his lungs.

He could cross that threshold if asked, by anyone else, even the animals.  When Rutaçyen had asked him to step in and out of the cell a dozen times he could do it without a thought.  When he tried to leave the cell through his own volition, every muscle locked solid and he could go nowhere.

One finger at a time he pried his grip off the door posts, took a deep breath and tried to overbalance out the door and he lashed out and grabbed rather than take that step.  He could hear Limyé and the dogs coming, at least he assumed that Limyé was with the multi-scramble-claw-clicking rush of dog nails on stone. He closed his eyes and stepped back from the dangerous threshold, went down on one knee to be swarmingly greeted by slobbering dogs’s wet noses and tongues.  How he had changed.  Before he would never have tolerated it. 

But when he looked, Limyé was not there.  “Yes, yes, it’s all right, you’re good dogs yes, yes, what the scorch?”

He flinched back as the dogs each took a sleeve and began tugging him toward the door.  “Have you beasts gone mad?” He had to stagger to his feet, at least part way, or fall on his face, though the blocky dogs weren’t quite tall enough to let him stand straight with his cuffs clenched in their bull-baiting jaws.

They dragged him along, play growling, huffing, his hair over his face and when they had him at a door he didn’t recognize they let him go, sitting down so smartly that it looked as though he had commanded them.  Ahrimaz didn’t recognize the hall or the door, save that it was an outside door, heavy only against the weather. A rack of woolen cape/coats hung by the door.  He stood looking at the dogs, then shrugged and took a coat, before opening the door to see where they’d brought him.

He nearly stopped dead in his tracks but Sure seized his sleeve again and Teh ran ahead along the dark breezeway to tug on the rope obviously put there so that the animal could open and close the door.

Sure dragged him into the building and Ahrimaz did sit down in the sand as Teh closed the door behind them.  It was the oddest riding arena that he had ever seen and was different enough that he could seize control of his fear and the knotting in his stomach and just sit.

“Father, those are already being trained as warhorses, even if they’re just foals.”  The old monster had looked at him and started to smile.

“You’ll have to try harder than that, son.  You go down there and choose your horse.  That’s why I gave you a rope.  If they bite you, if they kick you, fight back.  Punch them. Grab a stick… there’s lots in the paddock.”

The foals… really they were nearly yearlings... had already learned that their job was to be killers.  They’d had slaves sent in before, unarmed, and the men knew that if they got out of the field alive they were free.  At this point in their training none of the slaves ever got out.

The herd had their own hierarchy. He could see that.  He focused on the one that would be lead, and picked up the rope.  Then he went in like a maniac, screaming, running for ‘his’ horse making them get in each other's way.  They’d knocked him over once but he’d slid into a gap between two trees, wheezing.  It turned out later that sometime in the scrum they’d broken his ribs.  When the lead horse reached to bite him Ahrimaz reached back and, lightning fast, pinched his top lip, whipped a twitch around it.

He staggered out of the paddock, leading his killer by the nose, the rest of the herd milling behind them, confused.

The wind picked up in this early morning hour and the light gradually got stronger, filtering in through the translucent panels all around the top of the walls.  The stables were all apparently arranged around the arena.  The warm smell of clean horses helped ease his gut as he sat, even as the rest of him tried to panic.   

I'm not hurting, learning to ride.

There was an interested equine head poking out over every stall door, long noses bobbing as they turned their heads this way and that to catch his scent.  Every stall had a line of shapes along the front wall where the horses could reach and when the light grew a little stronger half a dozen of them started tugging on the green circles.

One started kicking his door and trying to bull his way out, making nasty, aggressive whistles, yanking at his green flag hard enough to rip it loose.  He chewed on it, still screaming, though muffled until he dropped the mangled remains.

“Scorch and Drown you lot!” Ahrimaz cried.  “Do even the horses in this world get votes?  I don’t know what that means!  But I know you!  You’re a killer.”

But the dogs apparently did understand and trotted to several of the horses -- though not the one making the most fuss -- to casually pull their stall doors open and Ahrimaz lurched to his feet, ready to run.  “You all can’t be killer warhorses now, can you?”  He began backing up slowly arms spread, eyes fixed on the first horse out of his… her stall.  She was a two-colour patched mare with a white splash on one side of her face and a bay on the other.  She paced out deliberately, a few steps ahead of a black and white filly and a dapple grey.

His attention fixed on the horses, he forgot to yell at the dogs who had put him in such danger.  Teh had vanished from his immediate vision and he backed up a bit faster, only to fall backwards over the dog who knocked his knees out from behind.

He rolled to try and get to his feet and run but found the coat pinned him and knocked him flat once more and he lay on the sand with three of the horses around him, and the damned and scorched dogs, all looking down at him, standing or in the case of the dogs, sitting on his clothing to immobilize him.  He lay, panting, wondering idly if the dogs had finally picked up on his desire to die and brought him to this pass.  I’ve killed enough war-horses, in war and out of it.  Surely they can smell that on me.

He tried to summon the indifference he’d learned but failed utterly and found his body giving in to the panic and the pain he felt around horses.  It cut through the pink haze of the drug that Limyé had him on completely.

He look up at the flaring nostrils, lips loose, showing the enormous flat teeth that could bite so painfully, heard the scream of a horse still confined and him kicking and banging on the closed stall door.  “If you aren’t going to stomp me to death,” he said mildly, “… just let him out.  He’ll do it for you.”

#47 - Always Groomed

Pelahir found James in deep conversation with Limyé outside the tub room.  The rush of water effectively masked their voices and he cast a quick glance down the hall to the cell.  “He’s asleep,” James said in his deep voice.  Limyé nodded.

“The intense exercise is helping break down the memory of torture in his body and mind both,” the healer said.

Pel grinned.  “And I didn’t even need to get beat on to tire him out, thank you Monsieur James.”

Teel grinned back.  “Just Teel, please.  It’s odd but I find I like him.  The other Ahrimaz often seemed… cool toward me.  Not that it was a problem but…”

“He was nervous of you,” Pel said.  “He said you could see to the heart of things and then draw it out bleeding on the page.”

Teel blinked.  “Really?”

Pel’s grin went away.  He set his teeth and turned away from the other two men, set one hand against the smooth polished stone and his forehead against his hand.  “I miss him,” he said through clenched teeth.  “I miss him every day as though someone ripped a hole in my heart and Yolend and I…  thank the Twin Gods we have each other.”

“I’m sorry.” James said quietly.  Limyé put his hand on his shoulder.

“You need to come speak to me soon,” the healer said.  “This is such a strange happening, and such a…” he shrugged, hands spreading expansively.  “… such an unusual thing.  I am here to hear you.  And I am starting to wonder how many things are being healed by this… exchange.  I have no information about the other world except what I get from this Ahrimaz and he does not think his Inné is crumbling.”

James leaned on the wall next to Pelahir, took the offered shoulder, silently.  “So you think this might be a way of ‘fixing’ this Empire, you think?  I’d like to hear your theories.”

Limyé smiled.  “So you may write them up?  Of course.  The basic thought I had is that our Ahrimaz’s reflect the country.  As Hand of the People he has no choice in a sense and if the civilization is healthy, if the people are healthy and the Gods then he, at one point, I would have said was the healthiest man in the Coalition.”

“And the Empire?”  Pel straightened to turn and put his back against the wall, rejoining the conversation.

“Was sick.  The court is corrupt.  The nobles are suffering the illnesses of overindulgence.  The Emperor is forced to channel all of the Divine through Aeono alone, though it makes him ill.  People who worship the Goddess are murdered publicly.” He paused, and gulped.  “All of Imarya was slaughtered and Ahrimaz tells me that physicians are now people’s only recourse when they are ill, and are often charged more than their lives for their services.”

“And just as our Ahrimaz reflects the health of the nation… or nations, so does—“

Pelahir cut James off.  “---The Emperor.”

The three men were silent for a time before Pelahir said quietly.  “I am no priest, but this might be the salvation of that Empire, if our Ahrimaz can resist becoming sick with it.”

“And you have to be strong and healthy for when it all unravels, if it ever does,” Limyé said quietly.  “The Empire might kill our Ahrimaz.  It might take his sacrifice to… to…”

“Pull the peace out of the war,” Pel said quietly.  “It’s what he swore to do.”  He straightened.  “And we may never get him back.  I’ll come down to talk to you day after tomorrow, Limyé.  Tomorrow I have all day with Rutaçyen and Ahrimaz.”

The healer nodded.

“May I talk to you a bit longer?” James asked, pulling out his notebook.  “If you have time, of course?”

“Certainly.”

**

Their voices faded off down the hall and Ahrimaz clung to the bars.  He hadn’t been asleep, though he had been drowsy. Clinging to the bars, through some trick of acoustics, he'd been able to hear every word.

Of course. How gently they rip out my guts and trample them into the muck.  This isn’t about me at all.  He is being driven like a donkey, probably by a God—dess, to save MY country.  MY people.  Ahrimaz, my brother I begin to feel sorry for you.  I begin to feel that this is hardly fair.  You did everything right and were the hero, the Beloved.

He rubbed his forehead slowly back and forth against the bars.  I want to whine like a child and cry ‘What about ME?’ I grit my teeth and straighten like the warrior I am.  I’ve never been groomed to be the hero. 

I’ve always been groomed to be the monster of the piece.

Unintentional Hiatus

I didn't intend to end up in the hospital.  I was just going to go to my doctor.

Turns out I was in too much respiratory distress for her to let me go and she sent me over to North York General Hospital Emerge.

Turns out I have pulminary embolii.  So now I'm on blood thinners for a while.

Too damned interesting.  And the flood of nausea from the U.S. continues.  I'm so sorry to see the Nazi's back.

I'll be writing again next week I think.

#46 - I'd Like It If You Could

With his eyes still locked on Ahrimaz’s face, Teel smoothly reached into his great coat, pulled out his notebook and licked the tip of his pencil.  “May I quote you on that?” He said.

Ahrimaz made to lunge forward but both Rutaçyen and Pelahir had him by the wrists.  Teel looked down, scribbling.  “Was that ‘ash-dick or charcoal dick’?” he asked.

Rutaçyen shook her head at him. But Ahrimaz subsided, staring at him.  “What?”

The warmaster shook him slightly.  “Was he untruthful in what he wrote?” Her touch on his wrist actually was a light hand, not physically holding him back, but he reacted as if her touch chained him to the ground.  “Did he insult you?”

“No! But. No!”

Pelahir tugged at the crumpled paper in Ahrimaz’s hands and he let go of it, and Pel’s eyes skimmed down the mangled sheet.  “It seems very… gentle.”

“Yes! No! But…” Ahrimaz subsided back onto his heels, where he’d knelt before, and shook his head, bewildered.

“What do you need to fear that you are so angry about?” Rutaçyen asked quietly.  There was a long silence as Ahrimaz thought it through, the rushing of the waterfall behind it all.  Teel could feel the spray beginning to soak into his coat, but didn’t move from where he sat, pencil poised over his page.

A raven swooped down from the Goddess tree above, settled on a branch right over the lip of the waterfall, bobbing up and down as it swayed and then when it opened its beak an amazing liquid trill of notes poured out, instead of a harsh croak.  It sang and as it sang Ahrimaz’s head tipped back as if he looked at it, though his eyes were closed.

“I’m… sorry, Teel,” he said at last and Rutaçyen and Pel both let him go.  “I am afraid of people.  I have always been hurt by people.  Soldiers I understand, and subjects can be commanded.  I am terrified of what free people will think and do.”

“Would you be hurt if I told people that?” James wrote it down, even as he asked.  Ahrimaz lowered his head and opened his eyes.  A breeze blew a swirl of snow down on them and the raven flapped away as if called to urgent business elsewhere.

“I… suppose not.”  Ahrimaz looked at Pel first, measuring his reaction.  Pel shrugged.

“It’s a generous piece,” he said.  “And doesn’t make you look like anything but what you are, at least from Monsieur James’s point of view.”

James bowed from the waist where he sat.

Ahrimaz leapt up then.  “Since you are here and neither of us is welching on this bet,” he said sharply, “I’m going to warm up before the war master teaches me anything.  Keep up, if you can, James.”

Even as Ahrimaz moved Teel was on his own feet, peeling off his greatcoat and dropping his notebook upon it next to his cane.  Ahrimaz wheeled to his right and took off next to the river, Teel on his heels.  The riverbank was treacherous with rocks and slippery so he could not run as fast, he turned up the bank to the groomed path and they hurtled past the priestess there, neck and neck.  Teel took as much advantage of his longer legs as he could but even the path, though smoother than the riverside, was uneven enough to slow them both down.

“You aren’t wearing a waistcoat today?” Ahrimaz said, panting.

“Nor a cravat!” Teel huffed back.  “The… back… of your… pants are wet.”

“Get… in… front… if you… don’t want… to… look!”

Then they saved their breath for running, Ahrimaz putting his head down and settling into a steady, ground-eating pace.

Rutaçyen and Pel stood watching them disappear around the bend, toward the bridge that would bring them back around the other side.  That path would have them scrambling up the opposite side of the waterfall and having them hopping the slick stepping stones across before bringing them back to where they’d started.

“In case you’re wondering,” Rutaçyen smiled at Pel who was beginning his own slow set of poses as his warm-up.

“No, Ru,” he smiled back at her.  “Not wondering at all why you aren’t running along with those two idiots.”  Distantly they could hear the thunder of foot steps on a wooden bridge.

She nodded and settled back down to her cross-legged pose in the snow.  After a time they could hear Ahrimaz and Teel puffing up the path.  “Moron.”

“Who’s… the… moron?”  Then just puffing breaths for a bit.  “I’m getting training from the best AND… I… get… a… story…”

No answer as the two men scrambled up the cliff path on the other side of the waterfall, throwing up puffs of snow.  At the top Teel gathered a handful of snow off the edge and tossed it sideways onto Ahrimaz’s head.  His head snapped around and he flung out a hand to catch Teel’s ankle.

He slipped the grab but responded by scrambling backward and managing to put together another snowball.  He threw it, hit Ahrimaz in the face with a light ‘pumpf’ as it exploded.  “Cheater!”  Ahrimaz managed to shout.  Teel slowed down and looked back over his shoulder just in time to get a slush ball in the side of his head and both men stopped running to begin hurling snow at one another.

Rutaçyen watched them, smiling.

Pel stood up from his last pose and watched them as Ahrimaz lunged for Teel and managed to knock him over and they rolled in the snow.

“Hey!”

“Peace!  This isn’t sparring OR our bet!”  Teel  had both of Ahrimaz’s wrists in his hands and he was a bigger enough man that he had him solidly, at least for a moment.  Ahrimaz rolled right over his head, snatching his wrists out of Teel’s hands but didn’t get up.  He stayed, sprawling, head to head with James.

“You’re right,” he said quietly.  Pel, standing below could barely hear them over the sound of the water.

Teel rose, beating snow out of his clothing, put a hand down to offer if Ahrimaz wanted his help getting up.  “The other Ahrimaz and I were friends,” Teel said.  “I’d like it if we could be.”

Ahrimaz stared at the proffered hand and actually made a motion to take it before snatching it back to his chest, rolling over to lie face first in the snow.

“Drowning hell, Ahri,” Teel snapped and grabbed him by the collar.  “Quit that.”

And Pel closed his eyes, waiting for Ahrimaz to explode and actually punch James.  Nothing.  He opened his eyes to see Ahrimaz standing in the snow, covered in it, visibly shivering, in front of Teel.  “Come on.  You need to get back down to the House to get into the tub.”  He looked over at Rutaçyen who nodded.  “And I don’t give a rainy fuck if you don’t want to.”  He took Ahrimaz’s arm over his shoulder, bending down to do so, and began steering him over the stepping stones and to the path back down to the House.

“I think they will be fine,” Rutaçyen said quietly.

“I didn’t know James was that good,” Pel said.

“Most people who are good warriors don’t tend to boast about it a great deal,” Rutaçyen said.  “Draw please and give me a good attack, Pelahir."